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Is Nostalgia the Reason for Adventure Time's Amazing Awesomeness? Transcript
Link to the video. >> MIKE: Here’s an idea: Adventure Time is popular because of nostalgia. theme Adventure Time, come on and grab your friends, is a kid’s television show on the Cartoon Network. It stars Jake the dog and Finn the human and was created by bearded human Pendleton Ward, pictured here wearing some awesome glasses. It is set in the magically Land of Ooo and it’s many kingdoms which are home to candy people, animals and a whole cast of generally weird but also adorable characters. My personal favorite is the snow golem. As one might suspect, the general thrust of Adventure Time is adventures. Finn and Jake are are best buds who go on all manner of moral, ethical and totally mathematical escapades. >> PRINCESS BUBBLEGUM: Finn, you’re terrible at math. >> FINN: Awe... >> MIKE: They rescue princesses, fight giant monsters, protect the innocent and have a strong dislike of evil dudes. And they are very popular. Amongst not only kids but also a huge contingent of honest to Glob growed up adults. Now if you’re a kid, Adventure Time probably looks a lot like the inside of your head: exciting sites, magical objects and impossibly terrifying things. But if you’re an adult, Adventure Time is like remembering your childhood, fighting to be taken seriously, constant encounters with new and unfamiliar challenges, grappling with a deer that has hands... creepy. For many adults, the core appeal of Adventure Time is its nostalgia. Not like Instagram filters or cassette tapes post-irony nostalgia, but more like classical nostalgia; a pain or an ache for a time passed that you can’t recreate. While we usually think of its roots as in culture or the arts, nostalgia was actually born in 1688 as a medical diagnosis for Swiss soldiers wishing to return home. Its this wiley emotion that’s a mix of good and bad, at the same time that you’re fondly remembering something you’re also confronted with the fact that it’s gone or unattainable. From its origins nostalgia weaselled its way into everything from art to politics to industrial design. You name it, someone thinks that the thing that came before it was better. Along the way, it transformed from medical nostalgia into poetic or romantic nostalgia, from a disease that could be cured with leeches to a feeling that could be evoked by a young kid in an animal hat. In Nostalgia of the Future, Svetlana Boym writes the object of romantic nostalgia must be beyond the present space of our experience. Somewhere in the twilight of the past or on an island of Utopia where time has happily stopped, as on an antique clock. I can definitely remember a twilight of the past with imaginary friends, tree houses, magical weapons and if given the chance, I’d happily stop there. Adventure Time is perfectly, romantically nostalgic for childhood. But so are a lot of other shows, like Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, the Amazing Adventures of Gumball, even Rugrats, sort of. What is it about Adventure Time that makes it so well liked? Especially by not kids. Here’s where it gets a little complicated. It’s because at the same time we the audience are experiencing nostalgia so too are the characters in Adventure Time. It’s nostalgia within nostalgia. It’s a nostalgiaception. Take a look at some of the clues: there was a mysterious, devastating mushroom war. A lot of the characters, especially Marceline and the Ice King, have this unexplained, evolving wish it were still the good old days past. The landscape is littered with human remains and technology and in certain episodes you can even see a partially destroyed planet Earth in the sky. I mean, Finn is the last human, for Glob’s sake. That is unless Susan Strong isn’t a fish and you count the Ice King as ha- eh, uh, nevermind. Adventure Time is a fun, adventurous kid’s show with a history. A potentially very dark music history. Pen Ward has even said his favorite emotion is feeling simultaneously happy and sad, so that’s a reaction he tried to illicit in Adventure Time. This is called ambivalence and it’s what’s at the root of nostalgia. It means you’re holding onto two really conflicting emotions at the same time. And Adventure Time does it two levels, so that’s four total emotions for the folks keeping track at home. You see it in the settings and in the relationships, but also in the cute but disturbing creatures, the comedic but dire situations, the childlike but nonetheless high stakes situations. It’s in the show, but it’s also experienced by the audience. All these things contribute to capital “D” Drama. Not like lower case “d” drama which is what LSP gets herself involved in. rings >> LUMPY STAR PRINCESS: Yeah, guess what, Slime Princess is in the park and she’s, like, talking to a new nice king, uh, and he’s, like, totally single. >> MIKE: Which by itself definitely doesn’t make a good show, but combined with the creator’s amazing imagination and character design makes maybe the best animated show ever. I’m biased. I really like Adventure Time. But seriously, I know more adults than kids who watch Adventure Time, including my mom so that has to mean something. Yes, adults watch cartoons, but that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that most of the cartoons adults watch are made for adults. The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, South Park, even most anime: adult situations, adult humor. And maybe with the exception of anime, very little emotional depth. Man, when Finn hugs the Flame Princess wrapped up in a tin foil burrito, it’s too much, it’s just too much. My Little Pony is maybe the only other close comparison, but its popularity is because of a whole other thing... that we talk about in a video that you should watch. Adventure Time is maybe the closest television comes to classic fairy tales. Exhibiting a combo of terror and humor, excitement and fear that are the very hallmarks of childhood. Or maybe I just have a playground crush on Marceline... What do you guys think? Does Adventure Time make you kind of sad? And is that why you like it? Let us know in the comments and if you’re feeling ambivalent about subscribing, you could just subscribe or not... Whatever. Yes, I grew a silly moustache. Let’s see what you guys had to say about YouTube and education: We were lucky to hear from Brady of Periodicvideos fame about last week’s episode. He sent us this clip: >> BRADY: Hey there Mike, I saw your video. You know, it’s so hard to measure or not whether YouTube is making people smarter. We all drown in viewings statistics, but what do they tell us? I’d like to show you some photos: This is Eddy from Arkansas, and his Christmas present was a signed photo from the scientists on the Periodicvideos channel. And this is Eduardo from Italy, his tenth birthday wish was to come to the University of Nottingham in England and meet his YouTube heros. And we seem to have countless stories like this, new things coming up all the time. Now this show that these people are listening; they’re really engaged. And if they’re listening this closely, they must at least be on their way to learning. >> MIKE: Thanks so much Brady for sending us that awesome clip. mc7738 is a high school biology teacher who says that YouTube indispensable in the classroom, especially considering how dry a lot of the textbooks are. If my high school experience was any indication, that sounds... that sounds about right. EuclidsParadox makes a really good point that YouTube allows you to sort of introduce yourself to a lot of different ideas without getting super invested and spending a lot of time. Uh, which is, uh, really interesting and a good point. To all of our Lithuanian fans a big labas. Did I do okay, did I do that alright? Lemme know. To Chris Chance, I think if anybody should be thanking anybody it should be us to you, but it’s good to know that you enjoy the show and that you find YouTube a great resource for learning. To Jill Suda, um, I was in college before YouTube was a thing and it was probably pretty similar... Far fewer cat videos though, which is, uh, I imagine a huge part of the college experience. And if you’re curious about the music you’ve been listening to, this is GraveArcadeOfficial’s remix of the five minute long video where all I say was GIF and GIF. If you’d like to listen to it or download it, click on my face. While I move it back and forth, like this... theme Category:Transcript Category:English Category:Complete